Yesterday, we drove by AMD HQ in Sunnyvale. There was a group of workers putting a ladder up onto the roof. We wanted to know if they were going to erect a large For Sale sign on the roof. "No comment" was their response.

An AMD PR person we know didn't find any humour in our little joke.

Doug Grose, chosen to run the new chip manufacturing operation, said that staying at the leading edge of semiconductor capability and having the capacity needed for the large volume of microprocessors was a big drain on AMD's financial position. But the ingestion of fresh capital into AMD via the Foundry Company deal means the For Sale signs won't be going up any time soon.

The Foundry Company, to be headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley, is globally positioned. Its part owner will be Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Manufacturing and R&D will take place in New York, Texas, and Dresden, Germany.

Hector Ruiz, chairman of AMD’s board of directors, is slated to become chairman of the new company. Its other board members are roughly split 50:50, with ATIC holding a slightly larger piece of the pie.

Grose said the new company's plans are to fully support all of AMD's product lines. He explained more of the strategy in an interview with EE Times. The company has plans in place to deal with the IP licensing issues raised by Intel and others, he said - but he didn't give many details.

Grose said AMD plans to build leading-edge capabilities and increased capacity to attract third-party customers. He said it is approaching the top 10 customers and going after their designs. AMD is also expanding its relationship with IBM, with a joint focus on 32nm chip design wins and production.

Grose feels the opportunities outweigh the challenges. However, most analysts see many hurdles for AMD after its bold move. Our own Intel expert, Andrew Thomas, sees it this way: Intel's objections centre around the cross-licensing agreement between the two companies, allowing AMD to implement such things as the x86 instruction set and SSE. Buried in the small print of the contract is the stipulation that AMD is not permitted to transfer any of Intel’s technologies to a third party. X
 
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